The thing I don't understand is why so often one hears discussion of the fruits of human labor as if it's all the creation of some alien race.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Aliens didn't come down to Earth and give us technology. We invented it ourselves. Therefore it can never be alienating; it can only be an expression of our humanity.
It is probable that for a long time to come the mass of mankind in civilized countries will find it both necessary and advantageous to labor for wages, and to accept the condition of hired laborers.
In an industrial society which confuses work and productivity, the necessity of producing has always been an enemy of the desire to create.
Labor is the source of all wealth and all culture.
We cannot, any of us, do all the things of which mankind stand in need; we must have fellow-labourers.
It's easy to forget that for centuries - for millennia - the 'workforce' was all of us.
I am a human being; nothing human can be alien to me.
So, one of the things I was doing with the aliens in The Quiet Invasion was creating that advanced society which had ideas about morality and proper use of natural resources that were radically different from ours, as the Europeans were from the American Indians.
If we descended from space aliens, that's just as viable as Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, as far as I'm concerned.
We are the only species on the planet without full employment. Brilliant.